Game Design Blog #2: Satoshi Tajiri and the First Generation of Pokemon

               The Pokemon franchise was inspired by the childhood of Satoshi Tajiri. Satoshi Tajiri had a fascination of collecting bugs when he was a child and he wanted to emulate that feeling and happiness he had as a youth for others. The character Ash Ketchum from the Pokemon television show is actually based off Satoshi Tajiri as a child. Ash Ketchum’s Japanese name is actually Satoshi making the resemblance more obvious. 

                Satoshi Tajiri and Pokemon artist Ken Sugimori had their own magazine called Game Freak. Eventually Game Freak evolved (just like a Pokemon. Get it?) from a magazine to a video game company. Satoshi valued the idea of friends playing together which is what helped him conceived the idea of Pokemon. When he saw that the original Gameboys had a link cable slot where friends could connect and play against each other he wanted to implement that into his game. Though he not only wanted people to play against each other to play with each other as well. Once Tajiri brought his idea to Nintendo, The CEO Shigeru Miyamoto (Ash’s rival Gary Oak in the anime is named Shigeru) decided to mentor Tajiri in the creation of games. This idea was pitched in 1990 and 6 years later in 1996 Pokemon Red and Green came out in Japan. 

                The Gameboy was actually considered a dying handheld and was not doing fairly well but when Pokemon Red and Green came out it improved the Gameboy’s sales dramatically thus saving Nintendo from collapsing. Tajiri even managed to sneak the Pokemon Mew into the game without Nintendo ever knowing. He included Mew so players would be inspired to trade with each via link cable and make the players bond more than they normally would. 

Pokemon Blue was eventually released to make improvements over the Pokemon sprites and mechanics of Red and Green. Eventually North America got Pokemon Red and Blue which used the same sprites and mechanics as the Pokemon Blue in Japan. North America appreciated the games just as much as Japan does and this started the power house known as Pokemon.